For Arrows of Pestilence: Dittany as a Remedy for Plague in Late Medieval Medicine

This paper examines the mobilisation of available knowledge in responding to new crises in the context of the Second Plague Pandemic (also called the Black Death). It studies the re-purposing of the herb Dittany of Crete (Origanum dictamnus) as a remedy for plague in late medieval Europe, with particular focus on England, and argues that it was due to the simultaneously material and symbolic connection between plague sores and arrow wounds that the herb achieved new usage against the disease. The herb’s medicinal use dates to ancient Greece, with Aris¬totle and Theophrastus alleging that wild goats use it to draw arrows out of their bodies. Such an application was extended to humans (or, more accurately, demigods) when Venus used the herb to treat Aeneas’ arrow wound in Virgil’s the Aeneid. In the wake of the Black Death, the use of arrows as emblems signifying plague as a disease as well as divine punishment rendered dittany—a potent medicine for treating arrow wounds—also efficacious against plague. The convergence of the religious and medical conceptualisations of plague as well as the indistinguishability of material and symbolic aspects of medieval medicine highlight the need for an alternative terminology to explain the composite and complex nature of phenomena in medieval thought.